In other news, it has been over 110 degrees for the past three days, with no signs of stopping. It could remain this way until I leave in February. Also did I ever mention that we finished the roof?! My room no longer leaks! It's amazing! Thank you all SO much for helping me raise the money that helped out both me and this amazing organization I work with. On with the post:
A few weeks ago we discovered ChildLine, a non-profit organization that provides a toll-free number that children can call 24 hours a day if they need advice or help about serious issues such as abuse, HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, or depression. We have added their phone number into our curriculum here at Daktari so that all of our children have access to this amazing resource, but we also wanted to see if we could work together with them to do more for the kids.
After getting in touch with ChildLine, we learned that they also do active reaching out to schools around the country. We were in the unique position to be able to facilitate their connection with Ramatau, one of the schools we work with and the home of one of our pilot Eco Clubs. We set up a meeting for yesterday, and headed out to the school to attend! The members of the Eco Club were all there, along with a number of other students from Grades 8-10. We had over sixty children come to the meeting!
Before the meeting the chairperson and vice chairperson spoke to everyone about the Eco Club, and what the club is about. Then there were three speakers from ChildLine, who captivated the children and engaged with them for a few hours. While most of the conversation took place in Sepedi (leaving Risette and I out of the loop) we were able to at least get a sense of most of it. In addition to going over when and why children may need to call the crisis line, the speakers spoke about the definition of abuse, the importance of speaking up for yourself and being assertive, and the importance of not giving into peer pressure. The kids were all very interested and learned a lot, and we think the meeting was a huge success! We hope to set up more meetings at our other schools!
It was so cool to get to hang out at the school and see some of the kids from my first few weeks at Daktari. The kids are so enthusiastic - it's amazing to see what's going on with them after they attend Daktari and they return to their schools. Here are some photos:
Me with some of the members of the eco club:
I was kind of obsessed with the big room where we held our meeting:
More soon!
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